Oh, man, finally. Years after showing Europe how a streaming music service ought to be done, and just a couple of weeks after Apple made it clear that their own iTunes-In-The-Cloud service wouldn’t do streaming at all, Spotify has officially confirmed that it will be coming to the United States within a matter of weeks.

Speaking at an ad conference in London, Spotify’s General Manager said that the streaming music darling was in the final stages of getting all the deals inked with the labels, and that he expected that the launch would happen sometime shortly after July 5th.

There’ll be compromises, though, over the European service. The music labels have been intensely skeptical of Spotify’s current model of allowing subscribers to stream ten hours of music per month for free, supported by ads. This model has led to Spotify to rack up over 10 million subscribers in Europe, 1 million of whom pay $10 a month for unlimited streaming, but that follow-through rate wasn’t good enough for the American labels. Expect the free offerings to be much curtailed over Spotify’s European offerings.

Even so, for a guy like me, who once tasted the nectar of Spotify, only to have it pulled away from me by an international move, this is all welcome news. I’m a Rdio subscriber, and I like it well enough, but it’s just not the same. July 5th can’t come soon enough.

I don’t see how iTunes Match and Spotify can even be considered competitors. ITunes Match is merely part of iCloud which is a backup and sync service. Spotify is a music streaming service. I can foresee both being a part of any music lover’s toolbox.

Gary M

“Apple made it clear that their own iTunes-In-The-Cloud service wouldn’t do streaming at all”

Really when did they say this? Agreed they were very vague about how the ‘matched’ content would be delivered to devices but they never said it woud not be streamed. The iCloud information on apple.com specifically uses the word ‘download’ for the previously purchased iTunes music but in the iTunes match info it just says that your library is availble to be ‘played’ on any of your devices. This neither tells us it will be downloaded or streamed, its simply not definitive right now.

I’ve seen a lot of talk in forums about what iTunes Match is and is not, but the fact is it is mostly speculation as we really don’t know.

Tiago Oliveira

I think Spotify is much better than iTunes. The only thing Apple has more (and not for so long) is the The Beatles dicography.

Btw. when it (both Spotify and iTunes on the cloud) will be a world wide service?cheers

Buster

stoked about this news. Spotify is the best and my friends will finally be able to join the fun club

Mssangol

But Spotify can also be used to sync your music wirelessly, kind of like the same way as iTunes Match..

RaycerXray

I’m thinking he meant to say that Apple isn’t offering a subscription service. As long as Apple doesn’t offer that then it is not a competitor to Spotify…or MOG and Rdio. Maybe sometime in the future…

Dilbert A

I’d like to hear why you think it better than Rdio. I’m considering both. Is it a UI or a UX thing?

I lean towards services with native apps for the Mac, so there’s that.

John or anyone want to comment?

Hitchkock

I

Hope they will also launch the **long** awaited iPad app. at the same time.

About the author

John Brownlee is a Contributing Editor. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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